A translation by Tarek Ghanem
Many neighborhoods traditionally used to be named after one of their residents, in recognition of their piety and influence on their community. The neighbourhood of al-Tunisi (literally the Tunisian) in old Cairo is named after the shaykh, educator and author of the new translation of the text below, titled ‘the Law of Repentance’. Al-Shaykh Abu al-Mawahib al-Tunisi (d. 881/1477) is author the Qawanin hikm al-ishraq (The Laws of Wisdoms of Illumination), the book to which our Law of Repentance belongs. In his biographical dictionary, al-Tabaqat al-kubra, Imam al-Sha’rani (d. 973/1565) describes the Shaykh Abu al-Mawahib and his book by asserting, “He has al-Qanun on the science of the [Sufi] Folks which is a splendid, unmatched book. It testifies to his complete sapiential experience in the spiritual path.”[i]
Shaykh Abu al-Mawahib Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Ahmad bin Dawud bin Salamah al-Tunisi, known as Ibn Zaghdan, was born in Tunisia in 820/1417. He died in Cairo in 881/1477 and is buried in a mosque that bears his name to this day. He memorized the Qur’an and studied Arabic, theology, and Maliki fiqh from a young age in Tunisia before moving in Cairo. After settling in Cairo, he resided near al-Azhar Mosque and his spiritual retreat was no other than the very minaret of that famous mosque and honored educational institution. In Cairo he studied Hadith with the erudite master Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 885/1449) and Sufism with Yahya ibn Abi al-Wafa’. He came to be associated with the Shadhili Sufi order and the Wafa’iyya branch, which was started by Shaykh Ali al-Wafa (d. 807/1405) and then continued to become a vibrant zawiya under his sons in the Mamluk era. Currently the Mosque of Waffa’iyya is separated from the Mosque of al-Tunisi by a highway. From Cairo Shaykh Abu al-Mawhib went to perform pilgrimage and stayed there for a while. Imam al-Manawi describes Shaykh Abu al-Mawahib as “His words are well-regarded. Talk about his stature testify to his elevated rank. He is the imam of piety, the of chief the ascetics, and the treasure of the Gnostics.”[ii] Shaykh Abu al-Mawahib was known for his connection with and immense reverence for the Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. His profound admixture (mazj), or intertextual commentary, on the famous Prayer of Ibn Mashish, titled al-Wazifa, continues to be recited to this day. He authored few books on spiritual topics and a collection of poetry. His Law of the Wisdom of Illumination is his most celebrated. According to its author, the reason he wrote down these laws is, “Because they contain that which is either as swift passing as an arrow or lofty and pristine, referring to knowledge with the most gracious allusion… offering intimacy to the wayfarer in the beginning, and cause him or her to reach guidance, God’s willing, in the end.”[iii]
Repentance in Islam is not only an act of rectification and cleansing of the heart. Al-Tawwab, meaning the Repenter or Relenter, is one of Allah’s ninety nines Beautiful Names. Allah also inspires us to turn by affirming, {Truly, Allah loves those who repent} (2:222). He also cautions us that, {Those who do not repent are the wrongdoers} (49:11). Also our beloved Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessing be upon, says, “I am the Messenger of repentance” (narrated by Muslim), and also says about himself, “I seek Allah’s forgiveness and repent to Him a hundred times a day” (al-Nasa’i and Ahmad). Starting with Adam, peace be upon him, returning to Allah the soil in which our souls are rooted. According to the Qur’an, Allah not only accepted the repentance of Adam, peace upon him, He also inspired him with the prayer of leading to his repentance (2:37). Repentance is a way of being and an outlook with which the believers advance in their life and path by constantly creating new openings and beginnings for themselves, by way of returning to their deity, anchoring themselves in primordial truths of their bigger reality, and achieving their maximal potential. No wonder then that, as a spiritual and practical act, repentance takes a centerstage in the story of our existence and the divine Trust and ethical responsibility we have.
We did offer the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to bear its burden and were afraid of it, and man picked it up. Indeed he is unjust, unaware. The result (of all this) is that Allah will punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the idolaters, men and women, and will accept the repentance of the believing men and women. Surely Allah is Most-Forgiving, Very-Merciful. (33:72-73)
The Law of Repentance is one of fourteen sections of the book of Law of Wisdoms of Illumination. As a literary and spiritual work, it is unique in its style and conten. The below is a new translation of one of its section. An old translation under the title Illumination in Islamic Mysticism, by Edward Jabra Jurji, was published in 1938. Despite its fluency, a new translation is needed. For example, even when followed by speaking about misguided groups (as in the translation below), the translator translated jama’a (lit. community) as “the Sufis”, instead of the obvious and correct translation as the Sunni Orthodoxy (ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama’). Each section of the book, or separate law for spiritual illumination, is made of a collection of rhyming interchangeable sets of aphorisms. For example the First Law of Divine Oneness (tawhid), is made of two sets of aphorism. It starts with headed as a ‘reality’ (haqiqa), followed by ‘subtilty’ (daqiqa), and then back to ‘reality’, and so forth. In the section on repentance there is dialectic between ‘affirmations’ (sing. taqrir) and ‘cautions’ (sing. tahzir). Between every affirmation and caution that author ably digs for a new understanding of how to best repent is achieved. Other laws in the book cover sincerity, asceticism, love, vigilant self-accountability, gnosis, and is concluded with general and special sainthood (wilaya), among others.
I trust that the readers can benefit from the inspiring insights of this text.
Being a translation of Qanun al-Tawba, from Abu al-Mawahib al-Tunisi al-Shadhili’s Qawanin hikm al-Ishraq ila kafat al-Sufiyya bi-jami’ al-afaq
The Law of Repentance (tawba): Meaning Returning (awba)
The Most Sublime says, {And turn all together to Allah, O you believers; so that you may prosper} (24:21).
Affirmation: According to the consensus of the Community [of the Sunni Orthodoxy], excluding the people of innovation and deviation, the conditions for repentance are: (1) to have remorse for contraversions that a servant committed, (2) to quit immediately from them without slowness or looking back, (3) to have resolve to never recommit them in the future, (4) to give back any property that was unlawfully taken, and; (5) to seek to free oneself from falsely falling into speaking ill of others in the honor.
Caution: Never ride the limping ride of disobedience, least it stops midway on the winding road. Rather, race in and march uprightly on the straight path.
Affirmation: He only commended you to repent in order to cleanse you from desecration, and in order to adorn you with the attributes of satisfaction. Therefore, rid yourself from your base and reprehensible attributes, and, instead, take on His majestic and honorable attributes.
They have elected you to a matter, so lofty–
If only you are able to understand that.
So be sagacious not to graze with the trivial herds.
Caution: Never abandon repentance, because the sign of prosperity is to adopt the path of the success.
Affirmation: He who has never acquired true repentance has not cleansed himself according to the People of the Path (ashab al-tariqah). Therefore, cleanse yourself and be among the repented so that He adores you with His attributes.
He, Most Sublime, says, {Truly, Allah loves those who repent, and He loves those who cleanse themselves} (2:222).
Caution: Never construct your castle of works on anything but the foundation of repentance and seeking forgiveness; so that you are not like he who builds on the brink of a crumbling abyss.
Affirmation: The repentance of the common ones is from slippage. The repentance of the elites is from habits. The reprentence of the elites of the elites is from everything other [than He], and gravitating toward spiritual stations and lights.
Caution: Never feel safe with sincere repentance, even it brought you the tidings of acceptance; because He, Most Sublime, is not questioned of what He does, and they are questioned.
Affirmation: The execution of repentance neither pleases nor is abandoning difficult. It was only made for you as a guarding protection.
Caution: Never repent outwardly while inwardly you are insisting on viles; so that you are like the Hypocrites who are satisfied with the contentment in the eyes of creation, while they brought on themselves the wrath of the Lord of the Worlds.
Affirmation: What has moved the resolve of the Folks to quit is their awareness of their state of wicked habits.
Caution: Never be allured by the promises of false hopes and procrastination, so that you are not barred from receiving closeness in the lofty stations.
Affirmation: He who the Real has made to witness the darkening of sins abandons them.
Caution: Never fall in the captivity of disobedience as, otherwise, you will take on the attributes of impurity, will perish, and your ugliness will not be covered. People will turn away from you from the abhorrent stench.
Affirmation: The Folks made breaking away with the friends of disobedience a condition for repentance. Abandon them prior to that for the sake of preserving your character, as this is more pleasing to your Creator.
Caution: Never return to the places of abandonment and the sites of desertion, as they might cause you to relapse instantly.
Affirmation: He who is continuously in repentance, with prudence and determination, is the truthful, genuinely-faithed one, the one who, based on his or her wayfaring, will arrive at the objectives of the path.
Caution: Beware of feebleness and laxity, as they are causes of lethargy. He who keeps the company of the vile ones shall have his wayfaring fall short from all the gains and good he or she seeks.
Affirmation: Had repentance not have any virtue except that it saves its possessors from their destruction, and bring them closer to the Sovereign Lord after remoteness [that would suffice]! Otherwise, one would be among the perishing one, because of their remoteness from the Lord of Worlds.
Caution: Stay away from that which will cause even the hands of an innocent person who is satisfied with kind commendation to apologize. Goodly states are in tranquility and happiness. Are not the types of confirmation that are often-recited enough of an admonition for a sagacious person?
Affirmation: How greatly different is the repentance of the longing lover from that of the one who repents out of fear and apprehension. The first is moved by longing to behold beauty. The second was cautioned by fear against the authority of rigor.
Caution: Be aware you noble, skillful, intelligent individual of making your repentance a reason for your wish to be fulfilled. Rather, making it a form our worship to your Master, so that you become one of the elite ones, the possessors of realization and sincerity.
Affirmation: Some used to not asking repentance, but rather for the desire for apprentice; so that they may find the incentive for resolve, which is more worthy of and better for achieving prudence.
Caution: Never claim that you have reached the station of repentance, while you are still continuing with your desires, preoccupied with your habits. Begone! Begone! Finding resolve has signs.
Affirmation: The station of repentance does not take it possessor away from the beginnings. The is why he or she is preoccupied with their striving, while in the end there awaits them the pleasure of different kinds of beholding. Or you may say, the beginning is getting rid of one’s habits and purification, while the end is a possession of enlightenment. Or you may say, the beginning rids oneself and adornes them, while the end is preparation for the light of manifestation. Or you may say, the beginning is staying away from heinous attributes and fleeing from mean character traits. Or your may say, the beginning is the filling the vessel with a better ‘I’, while the end is differentiating between ‘You’ and ‘I’. Or you may say, the beginning is letting go of creation, and or even adorning oneself with noble character, followed by the manifestation of the Self-Sufficient all-Knower. Or you may say, based on the beginning the end; is realized by way of discernment (firāsah) without the unveiling of devotion, which is known habitually. Or you may say, if the foundation of the beginning is firmly based on the proper foundations. Its possessor shall in the end find the objectives and the benefits he or she wish for.
Caution: Beware of constructing your path on
foundation other than that of God-fearingness. Otherwise, you may become of one
of the people of misguidance and caprice. Rather, seek the most cautionary
position, so you may find wish and happiness in your grave.
[i] Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha’rani, al-Tabaqat al-kubra, edited by Ahmad al-Sayih and Tawfiq Wahba(Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2005), 2:135.
[ii] Muhammad al-Manawi, al-Kawakib al-Durria fi tarajim al-sada al-Sufiyya, edited by Ahmad Farid al-Mazidi(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyah, 2008), 2:400.
[iii] Jamal al-Din Abi al-Mawahib al-Shadhili al-Tunisi, Qawanin hikm al-Ishraq ila kafat al-Sufiyya bi-jami’ al-afaq, edited by Muhammad Shihata Ibrahim (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Azharyya lil-Turath, 1999), 5.
All praises are due to Allah. We praise Him, seek His help, and ask His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil in our souls and from our wrong actions. Whoever Allah guides, no one can mislead. And whomever Allah misguides, no one can guide. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah. He is One, having no partner. And I testify that Muhammad is His servant and messenger. May Allah bless him and give him peace, with his family and Companions. Verily the best speech is the Book of Allah. And the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam).
With this opening invocation, I turn my attention to Tasawwuf – a realm of the Islamic sciences that is easily misunderstood without qualified instruction. Any discussion and/or comments on Tasawwuf must be backed by the knowledge of scholars in this field. Tasawwuf is one of the several Islamic sciences (ulum). Like most of the other Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in it’s later developed form, during the time of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam). This does not make it less legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences that only took shape many years after the Prophetic age; principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), for example, or the hadith methodology (ulum al-hadith). The essence of Tasawwuf is purely Islamic. To make this point, I will, in sha Allah, limit myself to reproducing opinions of scholars and taking extracts from several authentic sources.
I begin with a description of Tasawwuf in a recently published comprehensive work on Islam, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, edited by Professor John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press, Oxford, May 1995, 4 vols.: “in a broad sense, Sufism can be described as the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice. The original sense of sufi seems to have been ‘one who wears wool.’ By the eighth century the word was sometimes applied to Muslims whose ascetic inclinations led them to wear coarse and uncomfortable woolen garments. Gradually it came to designate a group who differentiated themselves from others by emphasis on certain specific teachings and practices of the Quran and the sunnah. By the ninth century the gerund form tasawwuf, literally ‘being a sufi’ or ‘sufism,’ was adopted by representatives of this group as their appropriate designation.
Understood as Islam’s life-giving core, sufism is co-extensive with Islam. Wherever there have been Muslims, there have been sufis. If there was no phenomenon called ‘sufism’ at the time of the Prophet, neither was there anything called ‘fiqh’ or ‘kalam’ in the later senses of these terms. All these are names that came to be applied to various dimensions of Islam after the tradition became diversified and elaborated. In looking for a Quranic name for the phenomenon that later generations came to call sufism, some authors settled on the term ihsan, ‘doing what is beautiful,’ a divine and human quality about which the Quran says a good deal, mentioning in particular that God loves those who possess it. In the famous Hadith of Gabriel, the Prophet describes ihsanas the innermost dimension of Islam, after Islam (‘submission’ or correct activity) and iman (“faith” or correct understanding).” [vol. 4, pp. 102-104.]
The link between Ihsan and Tasawwuf is reiterated in the English translation of Sahih Muslim by Abdul Hamid Siddiqi in a footnote to the above hadith: “Ihsan means beneficence, performance of good deeds, but in the religious sense it implies the doing of good deeds over and above what is just and fair. It is indicative of the intense devotion of man to his Creator and Master and his enthusiasm for virtue and piety. What is implied by the term tasawwuf in Islam is nothing but Ihsan. The aim of Ihsan is to create a sense of inner piety in man and to train his sensibilities in a way that all his thoughts and actions flow from the fountainhead of the love of God.” [vol. 1, pp. 3-4.]
In his work, The Cultural Atlas of Islam, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1986, Professor Ismail R. al Faruqi, a modern Islamic scholar and activist, devoted a chapter to sufism. The introduction to the chapter states: “Tasawwuf, or the donning of wool, is the name given to a movement that dominated the minds and hearts of Muslims for a millennium, and is still strong in many circles of the Muslim world. It nourished their souls, purified their hearts, and fulfilled their yearning for piety, for virtue and righteousness, and for closeness to God. It grew and rapidly moved to every corner of the Muslim world. It was responsible for the conversion of millions to Islam, as well as for a number of militant states and socio-political movements.” [p.295.]
In his work, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, HarperCollins, New York, Cyril Glasse describes Tasawwuf as “the mysticism or esotericism of Islam.” He writes: “The word is commonly thought to come from the Arabic word suf (‘wool’): rough woolen clothing characterized the early ascetics, who preferred its symbolic simplicity to richer and more sophisticated materials. The essence of sufism is purely Islamic. Sufism is found everywhere in the Islamic world; it is the inner dimension of Islam, from which the efficacy and force of Islam as a religion flow. Historically, the sufis have been grouped into organizations calledtawa’if (sing. ta’ifah), or turuq (sing. tariqah, ‘path’), the latter word being used more commonly in the later period, from the time of the Qadiriyyah order.Tariqah is now also a technical term for esotericism itself. Turuq are congregations formed around a master, meeting for spiritual sessions (majalis), inzawiyahs, khanaqahs, or tekkes, as the meeting places are called in different countries. These spiritual meetings are described in the words attributed to the Prophet: “Whenever men gather together to invoke Allah, they are surrounded by Angels, the Divine Favor envelopes them, Peace (as-sakinah) descends upon them, and Allah remembers them in His assembly.”
Sufism may take many forms, but it always contains two poles: doctrine and method. Doctrine can be summarized as intellectual discrimination between the Real and the unreal, the basis for this being found essentially in the shahadah: “there is no god but God” or “there is no reality but the Reality.” Methods can be summarized as the concentration upon the Real by the “remembrance of God” (dhikr Allah), the invocation of the Divine Name (dhikr means “remembrance”, “mention”, “invocation”). Both doctrine and method must, however, be complemented by perfect surrender to God and the maintenance of an equilibrium through the spiritual regime, which is Islam. In scholastic terms this is a movement from potency to act – in effect to the realization of the Oneness of God (tawhid), which is the goal of sufism. The Qur’an often underlines the importance of invocation in words such as these: “Remember God standing and sitting. . .” (3:191); ” . . . Those who believe and do good works, and remember God much. . . ” (26:227); and “Surely the Remembrance of God is Greatest” (wa ladhikru-Llahi akbar) (29:45). The principle of reciprocity between God and man is expressed by God’s revealed words: “Therefore remember Me; I will remember you” (fadhkuruni adhkurum) (2:152).
All spiritual method also necessarily involves the practice of the virtues, summarized in the concept of ihsan, the surpassing of self, which a Sacred Hadith defines thus: “Worship God as if you saw Him, for if you do not see him, nevertheless, He sees you.” To this, the sufis add: “And if there were no you, you would see,’ and make the summation of mystical virtue the quality of “spiritual poverty” (faqr). By faqr they mean emptying the soul of the ego’s false “reality” in order to make way for what God wills for the soul. They seek to transform the soul’s natural passivity into re-collected wakefulness in the present, mysteriously active as symbolized by the transformation of Moses’ hand. Humility and love of one’s neighbour cut at the root of the illusion of the ego and remove those faults within the soul that are obstacles to the Divine Presence. “You will not enter paradise,” the Prophet said, “until you love one another.” The disciple should live in surroundings and in an ambience that are aesthetically and morally compatible with spiritual interiorization, in the sense that “The Kingdom of God is within you.” The need of such supports for the spiritual life can be summed up in the Hadith: “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” [pp. 375-8]
In his Al-Maqasid, Imam Nawawi, the great Shafi’i scholar, discusses sufism at great length. His conclusions may be summarized as follows: “The basic rules of the way of sufism are five:
The foundations of all of these consist of five things:
The principles of sufism’s signs on a person are also five:
One reaches Allah Most High by
These include, among others, the following verses of the Qur’an:
Let me turn to another scholarly work of the Muslim world and the most recognized and authentic English translation of Quran by Abdullah Yusuf Ali: “The soul of mysticism and ecstasy is in the Quran, as well as the plain guidance for the plain man which a world in a hurry affects to consider as sufficient.” Preface to first edition of The Meaning of the Holy Quran, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Corporation, Maryland, 1991, p. xi. “Then came philosophy and the mystic doctrine of the Sufi schools. The development of the science of kalam (built on formal logic), and its further offshoot, the Ilm al-aqa’id (the philosophical exposition of the grounds of our belief) introduced further elements on the intellectual side, while ta’wil (esoteric exposition of the hidden or inner meaning) introduced elements on the spiritual side, based on a sort of transcendental intuition of the expositor. The Sufi mystics adhered to the rules of their own Orders, which were very strict. But many of the non-Sufi writers on ta’wil indulged in an amount of licence in interpretation which has rightly called forth a protest on the part of the more sober Ulama.” Commentaries on the Quran, The Meaning of the Holy Quran, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, p. xv.
The origin of sufism was also discussed by a great scholar of sufism, Ali Ibn Uthman al-Hujwiri, in his book Kashf al-Mahjub (English translation by Reynold A. Nicholson, Luzac and Company, London, 1976): “Some assert that the sufi is so called because he wears a woolen garment (jama’i suf); others that he is so called because he is in the first rank (saff-i awwal); others say it is because the sufis claim to belong to the Ashab-i Suffa, with whom may God be well-pleased! Others, again, declare that the name is derived from safa (purity).” [p. 30]. He then describes Ashab al-Suffa or Ahl al-Suffa (the People of the Veranda) in the following words: “Know that all Moslems are agreed that the Apostle had a number of Companions, who abode in his Mosque and engaged in devotion, renouncing the world and refusing to seek a livelihood. God reproached the Apostle on their account and said: ‘Do not drive away those that call on their Lord morning and evening, seeking only to gain His Face’ (Qur’an 6:52). . . . . . It is related by Ibn Abbas that the Apostle passed by the People of the Veranda, and saw their poverty and their self-mortification and said: Rejoice! for whoever of my community perseveres in the state in which you are, and is satisfied with his condition, he shall be one of my comrades in Paradise.’ [p. 81]. The Ahl al-Suffa included, among others, Bilal ibn al-Rabah, Salman al-Farisi, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, Khabbab ibn al-Aratt, Abdullah ibn Umar, and Abdullah ibn Masud (RadiyaíLlahu anhum)” [p. 81].
No discussion of Tasawwuf would be complete without mentioning the work of Imam al-Ghazzali. In his essay on Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Professor Muntansir Mir writes: “. . . Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, medieval Muslim theologian, jurist, and mystic. Few individuals in the intellectual history of Islam have exerted influence as powerful and varied as did Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali. When he died at the age of fifty-two, he had attempted, with an exceptionally perspicacious mind and a powerful pen, a grand synthesis of the Islamic sciences that has ever since evoked the wonder and admiration of scholars, both Muslims and non-Muslims. He gained distinction in the court of the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk, and at the age of thirty-four he was appointed professor at the Nizamiyah College at Baghdad. After teaching there for several years, al-Ghazzali suffered a crisis of confidence. Losing faith in the efficacy and purpose of the learning he has acquired and was now disseminating, he searched for the truth and certitude that alone could set his moral doubt at rest. He left his position at the Nizamiyah, withdrew from practical life, and spent eleven years in travel, meditation, and reflection. When he returned he had found the object of his search – in sufism. The details of al-Ghazzali’s quest for knowledge that would give certitude are found in his autobiography, Al-munqidh min al-dalal (Deliverer from Error). Al-Ghazzali tells us that, of the four groups of people who claimed to be in possession of the truth, only the sufis, who walked the right path, because they combined knowledge with action, had sincerity of purpose, and actually experienced the serenity and contentment that comes from direct illumination of the heart by God.
Al-Ghazzali’s critique of the philosophers, the esotericists, and the theologians constituted the critical aspect of his work, but there is a constructive aspect to it also; in fact the two aspects are closely linked. In a sense the principal motif of all al-Ghazzali’s work is spiritualization of religious thought and practice; form must be imbued with spirit, and law and ritual with ethical vision. Taking salvation in the hereafter as the final goal, and therefore the ultimate point of reference, he set out to identify and analyze the aids and impediments to that goal. This resulted in his best-known work, Ihya ulum al-Din, an attempt to integrate the major disciplines of Islamic religion – theology and law, ethics and mysticism. Here as in other works, al-Ghazzali seeks to demystify Islam. He maintains, for example, that in order to be a Muslim it is sufficient to hold the beliefs that have been laid down by God and his Prophet in the Quran and sunnah, and that knowledge of the complex arguments advanced by the theologians is not requisite of faith. The essence of religion is experience, not mere profession, and the sufis are the ones who are able to experience the realities that theologians only talk about. [vol. 2, pp. 61-63].
Recently one of the leading Muslim journals in US, the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, [a joint publication of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)], vol. 12, no. 4, Winter 1995, published a paper titled “Al Ghazali between Philosophy and Sufism” [authored by Professor Yasin Ceylan]. The author describes al Ghazali’s experience with sufism in these words: “Al Ghazali embarked on his investigation of four different schools of thought that were influential in his time – Batinism, theology, philosophy, and Sufism – in order to find truth in them. The first three did not satisfy him, while Sufism provided him the truth for which he had been searching. There have always been notable Sufis of varied backgrounds throughout the history of Islamic thought. Whereas most of them received the traditional education, some had so much interest in logic and philosophy that they pursued these fields in depth. However, none of them penetrated into these sciences as far as al Ghazali, who acquired an intimate knowledge of both philosophy and theology. Al Ghazali himself discloses why he was frustrated by philosophy in his quest for truth and why he choose to adopt Sufism instead. His account may be summed up as follows: His disillusionment with philosophy was derived from its destructive effect on the fundamentals of religion, while his attraction to Sufism was rooted in the fact that ethical refinement and the purification of the soul were necessary conditions in this discipline.” [p. 584] “Al Ghazali mentions three fundamental features related to his mystical experience: a) the purification of the soul from those evils and worldly desires that hinder moral perfection; b) those spiritual dispositions or explorations that occur after the process of purification reaches the level of maturity (described as extraordinary intellectual intuitions); and c) that these dispositions are not explicable through reason.” [p. 587]
In his work, The Cultural Atlas of Islam, Professor Ismail R. al Faruqi writes, “Reaffirming his view that Tasawwuf is both knowledge and action, al-Ghazali chastised those who sought to reach the mystical experience in a hurry. He also rejected the sufi claim that in the mystical experience one reaches God through fusion into or unity with the divine Being. Such a claim he regarded as blasphemous. The true perception of God is always perception of the presence of the transcendent as a commanding being; knowledge of Him is never a knowledge of His self but of His will. Al-Ghazali therefore could not countenance the preaching of Mansur al Hallaj who went about Baghdad claiming that through the mystical experience he and God had become one. By reaffirming that Islam implies action, al-Ghazali meant to repudiate those sufis who preached monkery and withdrawal from society, any form of asceticism or mortification, or nonobligation to observe the rituals and all other laws of the shariah. Al-Ghazali thus made Tasawwuf respectable and conformant with the shariah and spirit of Islam.
Thus al-Ghazali built his system on God as starting point and foundation, unlike the philosophers who started with senses or reason. He anchored reason in iman, whence it drew its ultimate postulates; and then gave it the freedom to be as critical as it wished. Without such anchoring, reason is fallible and untrustworthy. God is knowable through His works, His order and design of nature, His ubiquitous providence – all of which reason is capable of discerning in tentative but not definitive form. Between God and the world stands the realm of malakut and amr, by which al-Ghazali meant the realm of values constituting the ought of all that is or will be, a realm that is absolute, a priori and transcendent (malakut), as well as normative and imperative (amr). Knowledge of it is yaqin (apodeictic certainty) and such knowledge is the ground of all other knowledge. Al-Ghazali, we may concede, taught the primacy of axiological knowledge, which relates man to God, over the knowledge of the world, which would be faulty and groundless without the first.” [pp. 300-1]
Contrary to beliefs often held in the West, to set out on the path of sufism it is absolutely necessary to be a Muslim, for sufism’s methods are inoperative without this religious affiliation, and may even prove destructive to the individual who lack the protective and normative devotion of the religion of Islam, which is its vehicle. Ahmad Zarruq, the fifteenth century Maliki scholar and hadith specialist, states: “So there is no sufism except through comprehension of Sacred Law or Shariah, for the outward rules of Allah Most High are not known save through it, and there is no comprehension of Sacred Law or Shariah without sufism, for works are nothing without the sincerity of approach, as expressed by the words of Imam Malik (Allah have mercy on him): ‘He who practices sufism without learning Sacred Law or Shariah corrupts his faith, while he who learns Sacred Law or Shariah without practicing sufism corrupts himself. Only he who combines the two proves true.'” (Iqaz al-himam fi sharh al-Hikam, Ibn Ajiba, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, and Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn Ata Illah, Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi wa Awladuhu, Cairo, 1972, pp. 5-6).
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, one of the most influential and prolific of contemporary Muslim scholars, echoed the same view. In his seminal introduction to Islam, Risalah-yi Diniyat (later translated as Towards Understanding Islam, Khurshid Ahmad, The Islamic Foundation, U. K., 1980 and The Message Publications, Islamic Circles of North America [ICNA], New York, 1986), he defined Shariah as “the detailed code of conduct or the canons comprising ways and modes of worship, standards of morals and life, laws that permit and prohibit and rules that judge between right and wrong.” [p. 95] He then explained how Fiqh and Tasawwuf complement each other in Shariah. He writes: “Fiqh deals with the apparent and the observable conduct, the fulfilling of a duty in practice. The field which concerns itself with the spirit of conduct is known as Tasawwuf. For example, when we perform salat, Fiqh will judge us only by the fulfillment of physical requirements such as cleansing, facing towards the Kabah and the timing and the number of rakaahs. Tasawwuf, on the other hand, will judge our prayers by our concentration, devotion, purification of our souls and the effect of our prayers on our morals and manners. Thus, the true Islamic Tasawwuf is the measure of our spirit of our obedience and sincerity, while Fiqh governs our carrying out commands to the last detail. An Ibadahdevoid of spirit, though correct in procedure, is like a man handsome in appearance but defective in character and an Ibadah full of spirit but defective in execution is like a man noble in character but deformed in appearance. The above example makes clear the relation between Fiqh and Tasawwuf. Tasawwuf, in the true sense, is an intense love of Allah and Muhammad (blessings of Allah and piece be upon him) and such love requires a strict obedience to their commands as embodied in the Book of God and the Sunnah of His Prophet. Anyone who deviates from the divine commands makes a false claim of his love for Allah and His messenger.” [p. 97]
This point was further emphasized by Professor Muhammad Abul Qasim in his book, Salvation of the Soul and Islamic Devotions, Kegan Paul International, London, 1983. He succinctly summed up the mutual relation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and sufism. He writes: “The Quran teaches that the means to salvation in the Hereafter on the human side are belief or faith (iman) and action (amal): salvation cannot be achieved without these two means. Both of them are mentioned in most of the verses of the Quran containing references to salvation; in a few verses, however, only faith is mentioned explicitly, but action is implicit in them. That faith and action are the requirements of salvation on the human side is also the teaching of the prophetic tradition which is but an elaboration of what is briefly taught by the Quran. The prophetic tradition presents us with details of faith and action as means to salvation. Closely following this teaching of the Quran and Tradition, Islamic jurisprudence, theology and sufism have unanimously agreed that faith and action are the only two means to salvation. In working out the details of these means, however, they differ slightly among themselves. Thus jurisprudence accepts the outward meanings of the teachings of the Quran and Tradition, without feeling the need to explore their deep, inward meanings. Sufism, in addition to outward meanings, looks for inward meanings; it also adds material learnt from experience but not inconsistent with the Quranic teachings.” [p. 29]
“Sufis put a great emphasis upon the Quranic teaching that faith and action are both needed if a man is to ascend from the rank of lower animals to that of those who behold the beauty of the glorious face of God.” [p. 30] “Islam is a religion which enjoins moderation or the mean state of all affairs. In Islam there is place neither for too much of hardship nor for too much of lavishness, neither for excess nor for deficiency. Moderation is considered by Islam to be the most reasonable course of action and to enable man to achieve that at which the Islamic religion aims. A man has an outward aspect and an inward aspect, and moderation is to be observed in relation to both. His outward aspect is mainly the concern of Islamic law (fiqh) and hence in this field one often finds the prescription of moderation and middle course. The inward aspect of a man is mainly dealt with in sufism and Islamic philosophy and hence in these two discipline also we find that moderation or the mean is taught emphatically.” [Footnote no. 14, p. 54]
In fact, true sufis perform obligatory prayers and other duties (fard) which the Shariah has placed on them, and observe the sunnah of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) which he has recommended. They never think that they can any time dispense with the Shariah. Those who violate the Shariah and commit sins are rather impostors, who use sufism to justify their evil deeds. There is general agreement among sufis that the only way to know what things are legal or illegal, and what acts are right or wrong is the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam), the ijtihad of qualified jurists (mujtahidin), and their consensus (ijma). These are also the means for knowing the degrees of obligation, whether a thing is obligatory (fard/wajib) or forbidden (haram), commendable (mandub), undesirable (makruh), or permissible (mubah). The inspiration (ilham) or the kashf of the sufi has no rule in this regard, neither in determining the legality or otherwise of things, nor in fixing the degree of their obligation. Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, the great seventeenth century Indian sufi and religious reformer, states the common view in the clearest terms: ìIt is commonly agreed that in determining the rules (ahkam) of the Shariah, what counts is the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet, the qiyas of a qualified jurist (mujtahid) and the consensus of the Ummah. No other principle apart from these four is to be taken into consideration to determine the legality of rules. Inspiration (ilham) does not determine whether something is right or wrong, and the kashf of a sufi does not establish the degree of a rule, whether it is obligatory or desirable. The saints (awliya) have to follow, like an ordinary Muslim, the opinions of the mujtahids. Their revelations (kushuf) and inspirations (ilhamat) do not elevate their status and relieve them from following the judgments of the jurists (fuqaha). . . . They have to follow the judgments of the jurists (mujtahidin) in matters of ijtihad.’ [Maktubat Iman Rabbani, vol. II, p. 1041]. In the above statement, Sirhindi uses the term waliyat in the sense of nearness and intimacy with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala.
This vital Islamic science of sufism has been consistently expounded by the greater Muslim scholars of all time. The overwhelming majority of the Muslim scholars were actively involved in sufism. In fact, almost all the great luminaries of medieval Islam: al-Suyuti, Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, al-‘Ayni, Ibn Khaldun, al-Subki, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami; tafseer writers like al-Baydawi, al-Sawi, Abu’l-Su’ud, al-Baghawi, and Ibn Kathir, aqidah writers such as Taftazani, al-Nafasi, al-Razi: all wrote in support of sufism. Ibn Khaldun, Muslim statesman, jurist, historian, and scholar of the fourteenth century, devoted a long section of in his monumental work, al-Muqaddimah, to discuss the science of sufism. He writes: “Sufism belongs to the sciences of religious law that originated in Islam. It is based on the assumption that the practices of its adherents had always been considered by the important early Muslims, the men around Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) and the men of the second generation, as well as those who came after them, as the path of true and right guidance. The sufi approach is based upon constant application to divine worship, complete devotion to God, aversion to false splendor of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, property, and position to which great mass aspires, and the retirement from the world into solitude for divine worship. These things were general among the men around Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) and the early Muslims. Then, worldly aspirations increased in the second (eighth) century and after. At that time, the special name of sufis (Sufiyah and Mutasawwifah) was given to those who aspired to divine worship.
The sufis came to represent asceticism, retirement from the world, and devotion to divine worship. They developed a particular kind of perception which comes about through ecstatic experience. When the sciences were written down systematically and when the jurists wrote works on jurisprudence and the principles of jurisprudence, on speculative theology, Quran interpretation, and other subjects, the sufis, too, wrote on their subject. Some sufis wrote on the laws governing asceticism and self-scrutiny, how to act and not act in imitation of model (saints). Al-Ghazzali, in the Ihya ulum al-Din, dealt systematically with the laws governing asceticism and the imitation of models. Then, he explained the behavior and customs of the sufis and commented on their technical vocabulary. Thus, the science of sufism became a systematically treated discipline in Islam. Before that, mysticism had merely consisted of divine worship, and its laws had existed in the breasts of men. The same had been the case with all other disciplines, Quran interpretation, the science of tradition, jurisprudence, the principles of jurisprudence, and other disciplines.” Ibn Khaldun’s al-Muqaddimah, translated from the Arabic into English by Franz Rosenthal, 3 Vols., Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., 1967 [vol. 3, pp. 76-81].
Even Shaykh Ibn Taymiyah and his theological successors, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabisim, and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, could not at their time avoid being associated at one point with sufi tariqah. In his book, “Natural Healing with the Medicine of the Prophet,” (English translation of Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Tibb an-Nabbi), Pearl Publishing House, Philadelphia, 1993, the translator, Muhammad al-Akili, writes: “Later on, he (Ibn al-Qayyim) pursued his quest for knowledge at the hands of renowned masters and scholars of his epoch, as well as he studied the works and teachings of sufi masters known in his time.” [p. xi] “He (Ibn al-Qayyim) compiled a large number of studies besides his own books, including: 1. Tahthib Sunan Abi Dawoud (Emendation of Sunan Abi Dawoud); 2. Al-Kalam al-Tayyib wa-al-‘Amal al-Salih (The Essence of Good Works and Deeds); 3. Commentaries on the book of Shaikh Abdullah al-Ansari: Manazil-u Sa’ireen (Stations of the Seekers), which is considered the epitome of knowledge of sufi books; and Zad al-Ma’ad (Provisions of the Hereafter).’ [p. xiii]
Ibn Taymiyah’s views on Tasawwuf have been discussed in greater detail in the book titled “Sufism and Shariah : A Study of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi’s Effort to Reform Sufism” by Dr. Muhammad Abdul Haq Ansari, The Islamic Foundation, U. K., 1986. Dr. Ansari quoted from three well-known works of Ibn Taymiyah, Majmu Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam, compiled by Abd al-Rahman b. Qasim and his son Muhammad, Riyadh, 1398 A. H, 39 vols., Majmu’at al-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, compiled by Rashid Rida, Cairo, 4 parts in 2 vols., and Al-Furqan bayn Awliya Allah wa Awliya’ al-Shaytan, edited by M. Abd al-Wahhab Fa’ir, Beirut, Dar ël-Fikr. Dr. Ansari writes “The popular image of Shaykh Ibn Taymiyah, which early Western writers on Islam in modern times have considerably helped to build up, is that he criticizes sufism indiscriminately, is totally against the sufis, and sees no place for sufism in Islam. Nothing of this, however, is correct. Ibn Taymiyah, to be sure, is a most thorough and most incisive critic of sufism; and his criticism is not limited to a few philosophical doctrines or some popular practices, as some writers have held, but covers the entire field of sufi thought and life. But he is certainly not indiscriminate; at times, he is bitter, but on the whole sympathetic. And far from saying that sufism has no place in Islam, he moves to define the perimeters of an Islamic sufism. Ibn Taymiyah’s general attitude to sufism is disclosed in this passage: ‘Some people accept everything of sufism, what is right as well as what is wrong; others reject it totally, both what is wrong and what is right, as some scholars of kalam and fiqh do. The right attitude towards sufism, or any other thing, is to accept what is in agreement with the Quran and the Sunnah, and reject what does not agree'” [Majmu Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam, vol. 10, p. 82].
Ibn Taymiyah applies this principle of judicious criticism to sufi ideas, practices and personalities. He divides the sufis into three categories. In the first category of sufis whom he calls mashaikh al-Islam, mashaikh al-Kitab wa al-Sunnah and a’immat al-huda, [Majmu’at al-Rasa’il wa al-Masa’il, vol. 1, p. 179, and Majmu Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam, vol. 10, pp. 516-7 and vol. 11, p. 233] he mentions Fudayl b. Iyad, Ibrahim b. Adham, Shaqiq al-Balkhi, Abu Sulayman al-Darani, Maruf al-Karkhi, Bishr ëa-Hafi, Sari al-Saqati, al-Junayd b. Muhammad, Sahl b. Abd Allah al-Tustari and Amr b. Uthman al-Makki. Later sufis whom he places in this category are: Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Shaykh Hammad al-Dabbas, and Shaykh Abu al-Bayan. These sufis, Ibn Taymiyah says, were never intoxicated, did not lose their sense of discrimination, or said or did anything against the Quran and the Sunnah. Their lives and experiences conformed with the Shariah (mustaqim al-ahwal) [Majmu Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam, vol. 10, pp. 516-7].
The second category consists of those sufis whose experience of fana and intoxication (sukr) weakened their sense of discrimination, and made them utter words that they later realized to be erroneous when they became sober [Majmu Fatawa Shaykh ël-Islam, vol. 10, pp. 220-1]. Some of them also did things [Majmu Fatawa Shaykh ël-Islam, vol. 10, pp. 382, 557] under intoxication of which the Shariah does not approve, but sooner or later they became sober and lived well. In this category Ibn Taymiyah mentions the names of Abu Yazid al-Bostami, Abu al-Husayn al-Nuri and Abu Bakr al-Shibli. But he neither censures their experience of fana and sukr, nor condemns what they said or did in that state. Instead, he offers apology for them on the ground that they were intoxicated (sukran), and had lost control over reason. [Majmu’at ël-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, vol. 1, p. 168; Majmu Fatawa Shaykh ël-Islam, vol. 10, pp. 382, 557].
His criticism is directed to the third category of sufis who have believed in ideas and expounded doctrines which contradict Islamic principles, or who have indulged in practices which are condemned by the Shariah. The first sufi in this group is al-Hallaj [Majmu’at ël-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, vol. 1, pp. 81, 83;Majmu Fatawa Shaykh ël-Islam, vol. 11, p. 18]. . . . Next to al-Hallaj, the sufis who draw strong criticism from Ibn Taymiyah are the ones who expound the doctrine of One Being (wahdat al-wujud), such as Ibn ël-Arabi, Sadr ël-Din ël-Qunawi, Ibn Sab’in and Tilimsani. . . . . Ibn ël-Arabi, who is the central figure in this context (of wahdat ël-wujud ), Ibn Taymiyah subjects him to detailed criticism. He is, however, fair to recognize that of all the exponents of wahdat ël-wujud he is closer to Islam, that many of his ideas are correct, that he distinguishes between the Manifest (al-Zahir) and the objects of manifestation (mazahir), and accepts the commands and the prohibitions (of the Shar’) and other principles as they are. He recommends many things in suluk which sufi leaders have prescribed concerning good behavior and devotion. This is why a number of people draw upon his writings in their suluk and benefit from them, even though they do not know their real import. [Majmu’at ël-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, vol. 1, p. 176]
Ibn Taymiyah does not oppose the tariqah of the sufis as such, neither their concentration on some approved ways, nor adoption of new ones, provided they do not fall into the category of unauthorized innovation (bid’at). He does not object, for instance, to the experience of fana and union; what he requires is that one should not make it the goal of sufism, or entertain mistaken ideas about it. He would not object to intensification of some approved forms of dhikr, or reliance on some methods for purifying the soul, with the neglect of others, provided it is within the limits of the Shariah [Majmu’at ël-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, vol. 4, pp. 86-87]. A sufi may, for instance, withdrew temporarily to a cloister (khalwah) [Majmu’at ël-Rasa’il wa ël-Masa’il, vol. 4, pp. 84-6, 92-3], provided he observes the salat in assembly and the Friday prayer, and renders his essential obligations. Ibn Taymiyah would insist that these practices should not change or alter the values of things which the Shariah normally attaches to them [Majmu Fatawa Shaykh ël-Islam, vol. 11, pp. 398-400]. “There is no way to God”, he says, “except following the Prophet externally and internally” [Al-Furqan bayn Awliya Allah wa Awliya’ ël-Shaytan, p. 145].
It is worthwhile to note that Al-Hallaj was executed in Baghdad in 922 for saying “Ana al-Haqq” (“I am the Truth,” i.e., God), and his former teacher, al-Junayd, was among those who gave the verdict that he should die. [See Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, in Tabakat al-Sufiyya, Edited by Nur al-Din Shariba, Maktaba al-Khanji, Cairo, 1986, pp. 307-8, for details.]
It is proper to discuss how Tasawwuf played a significant role in shaping two Islamic movements – the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) and the Tablighi Jamaat. In his essay on Muslim Brotherhood in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World,, Professor Nazih N. Ayubi wrote: ìFounded in Ismailiyah, Egypt, in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949), the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) is the parent body and the main source of inspiration for many Islamist organizations in Egypt and several other Arab countries, including Syria, Sudan, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, and some north African states.’ [vol. 3, pp. 183-7]
In his essay on Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Professor Denis J. Sullivan writes: ìHasan al-Banna was born in October 1906 in Buhayrah Province, northeast of Cairo. His father was imam and teacher at the local mosque. By his early teen years, al-Banna was committed to sufism, teaching, organizing for the cause of Islam, nationalism, and activism. As an organizer, he worked with various societies. At the age of twelve, in his hometown of Mahmudiyah, he became the leader of the Society for Moral Behavior and soon thereafter, a member of the Hasafiyah sufi order. At age thirteen, he was named secretary of the Hasafiyah Society for Charity, whose goals were to preserve Islamic morality and resist Christian missionaries. Ahmed al-Sukhari, head of the order, later helped al-Banna develop the idea of the Ikhwan. Combined with the extracurricular influences of sufism, the thought of Muhammad Rashid Rida and the Salafiyah movement, nationalism, and his father’s instruction, al-Banna developed a diverse intellectual basis for his own mission.’ [vol. 3, pp. 187-191]
ìAl-Banna was involved with the tariqah (of sufi shaykh, Hasanayn al-Hasafi) for twenty years and maintained a respect for this strict style of sufism throughout his life. It appears to have influenced his organizational thinking in terms of the methods of instruction in his Muslim Brotherhood and the daily rituals required of its members.’ [vol. 4, p. 115]
In his essay on Tablighi Jamaat in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Professor Mumtaz Ahmad, writes: ìThe Tablighi Jamaat of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, also variously called the Jamaat (Party), Tahrik (Movement), Nizam (System), Tanzim (Organization), and Tahrik-i Iman (Faith Movement), is one of the most important grassroots Islamic movements in the contemporary Muslim world. From a modest beginning in 1926 with dawah (missionary) work in Mewat near Delhi under the leadership of the sufi scholar Maulana Muhammad Ilyas (1885-1944), the Jamaat today has followers all over the Muslim world and the West. Its 1993 annual international conference in Raiwind near Lahore, Pakistan, was attended by more than one million Muslims from ninety-four countries. In fact, in recent years the Raiwind annual conference has become the second largest religious congregation of the Muslim world after the Hajj.
The pietistic and developmental aspects of the Tablighi Jamaat owe their origin to the sufi teachings and practices of Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi, Shah Wali Allah, and the founder of the Mujahidin movement, Sayyid Ahmad Shahid (1786-1831). These sufis, who belonged to the Naqshbandiyah order, considered the observance of the Shariah integral to their practices. It is in this sense that the Tablighi Jamaat has been described, at in its initial phase, both as a reinvigorated form of Islamic orthodoxy and as a reformed sufism. Maulana Ilyas, an Islamic religious scholar in the tradition of the orthodox Deoband seminary in the United Province and a follower of the Naqshbandiyah, . . . . .
In matters of religious beliefs and practices, the Tablighi Jamaat has consistently followed the orthodox Deoband tradition and has emphasized taqlid (following the established schools of Islamic law) over ijtihad (independent reasoning). It rejects such popular expressions of religions as veneration of saints, visiting shrines, and observing the syncretic rituals associated with popular sufism. The Jamaat can thus be considered an heir to the reformist-fundamentalist tradition of Shah Wali Allah, with its emphasis on reformed sufism and strict observation of the sunnah of the Prophet.’ [vol. 4, pp. 165-169]
In his book, The Faith Movement of Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1972, M. Anwarul Haq dwelt a great deal on the life, work, and thought of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, with an exclusive focus on the sufi origin of his movement. More evidence on the link between Tasawwuf and Tablighi Jamaat can be found in ìFaza’il-e-A’maal,’ Muhammad Zakariya, Waterval Islamic Institute, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1994. Faza’il-e-A’maal, a revised edition of Tablighi Nisab (Islamic Teachings), is a collection of treatises by a scholar of hadith (Shaikhul Hadith), patron, and close relative of the founder of the Tablighi Jamaat, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas. The book is part of the instruction readings of the Jamaat. I will present a few excerpts from this book: ìRequisites of good salaat suggested by sufis: The sufis write: There are twelve thousand virtues in salaat, which can be achieved through twelve points. If a person is to acquire full benefit from salaat, then, he must take care of these points. Sincerity is of course essential at every step. These points are as follows: 1. knowledge, 2. Wudhu, 3. Dress, 4. Time, 5. Qiblah, 6. Intention, 7. Takbeer Tahreemah, 8. Qiyaam, 9. Qiraat, 10. Ruku, 11. Sajdah, and 12. Qadah.’ [pp. 95-97] Salaat of few Sahaabah, Taabiees and sufis:’ [pp. 98-103] ìAn Important Note: According to the sufis, salaat is in fact a supplication to and speech with Allah, and therefore needs through concentration.’ [p. 103]
With all this, we observe a contradiction. Why is it, if sufism has been so respected a part of Muslim intellectual and political life throughout our history that there are, nowadays, angry voices raised against it? Apparently there are two reasons. First, there have been deviant manifestations of true devotional sufism. In his work, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Cyril Glasse describes this issue as follows: ìAn offshoot of popular devotional sufism seeks reassurance above all in psychic phenomena, communication with spirits, or jinn, trance dancing, magic, prodigies such as eating glass, piercing the body with knives, and so forth. In psychic powers and extraordinary mental states it finds proofs of spiritual attainment. It has given rise to the European use of the word fakir (which comes from the word for an authentic sufi disciple, a dervish, or faqir, literally a ìpoor one’) to mean a market-place magician or performer, and has attained notoriety not only among Western observers, but also in Islamic societies.’ [p. 380]
ëAbd al-Karim Jili, the fourteenth century scholar of Sacred Law or Shariah, describes such an experience: ìMy brother, Allah have mercy on you, I have traveled to the remotest cities and dealt with all types of people, but never has my eye seen, nor ear heard of, nor is there any uglier or farther from presence of Allah Most High than a certain group who pretend they are accomplished sufis, claiming for themselves a lineal spiritual tradition from the perfected ones and appearing in their guise, while they do not believe in Allah, His messengers, or the Last Day, and do not comply with the responsibilities of the Sacred Law or Shariah, depicting the states of the prophets and their messages in a manner that no one with a particle of faith in his heart can accept, let alone someone who has reached the level of those to whom the unseen is disclosed and who have gnostic insight. We have seen a great number of their luminaries in cities in Azerbaijan, Shirwan, Jilan, and Khurasan, may Allah curse them all.’ (Idah al-maqsud min wahdat al-wujud, ëAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, Matba’a al-‘Alam, Damascus, 1969, pp. 17-18).
Second, there is the emergence of what is known as ìfolk’ sufism. Some people are baffled by the dress, terminology, or demeanor of the sufis. They imitate the sincere sufis externally without experiencing spiritual struggle or self-discipline. Rather, they pounce upon and quarrel over wealth that is unlawful, doubtful, or from rulers, rending each other’s honor whenever they are at cross-purposes. In his Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Cyril Glasse describes it and contrasts it with true devotional sufism in the following words: ìMetaphysical’ sufism, as taught by the great spiritual masters, is different from ìfolk’ sufism. In some countries hundreds of thousands of disciples have at times been attached to a single master, more than could possibly have had a true vocation for an integral spiritual path. A kind of sufism has evolved which reflects a popular idea of spirituality. As happens in every civilization, this popular spirituality confuses piety (augmented by great zeal and a multiplication of ritual practices) with pure spiritual intuition and lustral, transcendent knowledge. Needless to say, folklore hawked as the ìwisdom of idiots’ may be exactly that, but it has nothing to do with sufism of any kind, nor is it a ìself-development’ divorced from its religious framework. Metaphysical, or true, sufism is a spiritual way at the heart of Islam. Its starting point is discrimination between the Real and the unreal, its method is concentration upon the Real, and its goal is the Real. In the words of a Sacred Hadith: ìMy servant does not cease to approach Me with acts of devotion, until I become the foot with which he walks, the hands with which he grasps, and the eye with which he sees.’ Bayazid al-Bistami said: ìFor thirty years I went in search of God, and when I opened my eyes at the end of this time, I discovered that it was really He who sought me.’ [p. 380]
The rightly guided sufis very strongly oppose and condemn practices such as excessive veneration of saints, calling upon saints for aid or protection, praying to saints, annual celebrations and feasts at the grave of a saint (ëurs), and observing the syncretic rituals. It is stressed that the excessive veneration of a saint would probably lead to the worship of something other than Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala – to polytheism or associating partners with Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala (shirk) and that showy attractions during feasts are definitely contrary to shariah and should therefore be prohibited. A person who prays to a saint is probably attributing to the saint powers that should only be attributed to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala. Professor William C. Chittick writes, ìAlthough the great sufi authorities set down many guidelines for keeping sufism squarely at the heart of the Islamic tradition, popular religious movements that aimed at intensifying religious experience and had little concern for Islamic norms were also associated with sufism. Whether or not the members of these movements considered themselves sufis, opponents of sufism were happy to claim that their excesses represented sufism’s true nature. The sufi authorities themselves frequently criticized false sufis.’ [The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 4, p. 104]. It is noteworthy that more recently hundreds of volumes have been published in the West on sufism and most of these were written by people who have ìadopted’ sufism to justify teachings of questionable origin, or who have left the safeguards of right practice and right thought – Islam and iman – and hence have no access to the ihsan that is built upon the two.
Scholars have strong warning for these pretenders to sufism. Imam Ghazali says: ìWhen anyone claims there is a state between him and Allah relieving him of the need to obey the Sacred Law or Shariah such that the prayer, fasting, and so forth are not obligatory for him, or that drinking wine and taking other people’s money are permissible for him – as some pretenders to sufism, namely those ìabove the Sacred Law or Shariah’ (ibahiyyun) have claimed – there is no doubt that the imam of the Muslims or his representative is obliged to kill him. Some hold that executing such a person is better in Allah’s sight than killing a hundred unbelievers in the path of Allah Most High.’ (Hashiya al-Shaykh Ibrahim al-Bajuri, Dar al-Fikr, Beirut, 1925, Abu Shuja’ al-Asfahani, Ahmad ibn al-Husayn, Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Bajuri, and Muhammad ibn Qasim al-Ghazzi, Dar al-Fikr, Beirut, 1925, vol. 2, p. 267).
ëIzz ibn ëAbd al-Salam, a Shafi’i scholar and mujtahid Imam, writes: ìIf one sees someone who can fly through the air, walk on water, or inform one of the unseen, but who contravenes the Sacred Law or Shariah by committing an unlawful act without an extenuating circumstance that legally excuses it, or who neglects an obligatory act without lawful reason, one may know that such a person is a devil Allah has placed there as a temptation to the ignorant. Nor is it far-fetched that such a person should be one of the means by which Allah chooses to lead men astray, for the Antichrist (al-Dajjal) will bring the dead to life and make the living die, all as a temptation and affliction to those who would be misled (al-Iman al-‘Izz ibn Abd al-Salam wa atharuhu fi al-fiqh al-Islami, Ali Mustafa al-Faqir, Mudiriyya al-Ifta’ li al-Quwat al-Musallaha al-Uduniyya, Amman, 1979, vol. 1, p. 137). Al-Junayd, ìthe master of all the sufis’ (Shaykh al-ta’ifah) was once told, ìThere is a group who claim they arrive to a state in which legal responsibility (such as salaat, siyam) no longer applies to them.’ ìThey have arrived,’ he replied, ìbut to hell’ (Iqaz al-himam fi sharh al-Hikam, Ibn Ajiba, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, and Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn Ata Illah, Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi wa Awladuhu, Cairo, 1972, p. 210).
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi reiterates the same view : ‘It is the misfortune of the Muslims that as they sank in knowledge and character with the passage of time, they also succumbed to the misguided philosophies of nations which were then dominant. They partook of these philosophies and patched Islam with their perverted ideas. They polluted the pure spirit of Islamic Tasawwuf with absurdities that could not be justified by any stretch of imagination on the basis of the Quran and the Hadith. Gradually, a group of Muslims appeared who thought and proclaimed themselves immune to and above the requirements of the Shariah. These people are totally ignorant of Islam, for Islam cannot admit of Tasawwuf that loosens itself out of the Shariah and takes liberties with it. No Sufi has the right to transgress the limits of the Shariah or treat lightly the primary obligations (Faraid) such as daily prayers, fasting, zakah and the hajj.’ [Towards Understanding Islam, p. 97]
I have stated views of scholars on sufism as faithfully as I could. These opinions of scholars are a real testimony to the Islamic character of the sufism. I hope that this presentation will remove many wrong notions that people have about sufism. It will not be difficult now for anyone to see that sufism, properly conceived, has a rightful place in Islam. And Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala knows best. I ask Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala for His forgiveness. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala guide us all to what is correct and pleasing to Him. Aameen!
Perhaps the biggest challenge in learning Islam correctly today is the scarcity of traditional ‘ulama. In this meaning, Bukhari relates the sahih, rigorously authenticated hadith that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Truly, Allah does not remove Sacred Knowedge by taking it out of servants, but rather by taking back the souls of Islamic scholars [in death], until, when He has not left a single scholar, the people take the ignorant as leaders, who are asked for and who give Islamic legal opinion without knowledge, misguided and misguiding” (Fath al-Bari, 1.194, hadith 100).
The process described by the hadith is not yet completed, but has certainly begun, and in our times, the lack of traditional scholars—whether in Islamic law, in hadith, in tafsir ‘Qur’anic exegesis’—has given rise to an understanding of the religion that is far from scholarly, and sometimes far from the truth. For example, in the course of my own studies in Islamic law, my first impression from orientalist and Muslim-reformer literature, was that the Imams of the madhhabs or ‘schools of jurisprudence’ had brought a set of rules from completely outside the Islamic tradition and somehow imposed them upon the Muslims. But when I sat with traditional scholars in the Middle East and asked them about the details, I came away with a different point of view, having learned the bases for deriving the law from the Qur’an and sunna.
And similarly with Tasawwuf—which is the word I will use tonight for the English Sufism, since our context is traditional Islam—quite a different picture emerged from talking with scholars of Tasawwuf than what I had been exposed to in the West. My talk tonight, In Sha’ Allah, will present knowledge taken from the Qur’an and sahih hadith, and from actual teachers of Tasawwuf in Syria and Jordan, in view of the need for all of us to get beyond clichés, the need for factual information from Islamic sources, the need to answer such questions as: Where did Tasawwuf come from? What role does it play in the din or religion of Islam? and most importantly, What is the command of Allah about it?
As for the origin of the term Tasawwuf, like many other Islamic discliplines, its name was not known to the first generation of Muslims. The historian Ibn Khaldun notes in his Muqaddima:
This knowledge is a branch of the sciences of Sacred Law that originated within the Umma. From the first, the way of such people had also been considered the path of truth and guidance by the early Muslim community and its notables, of the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), those who were taught by them, and those who came after them.
It basically consists of dedication to worship, total dedication to Allah Most High, disregard for the finery and ornament of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and retiring from others to worship alone. This was the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims, but when involvement in this-worldly things became widespread from the second Islamic century onwards and people became absorbed in worldliness, those devoted to worship came to be called Sufiyya or People of Tasawwuf (Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima [N.d. Reprint. Mecca: Dar al-Baz, 1397/1978], 467).
In Ibn Khaldun’s words, the content of Tasawwuf, “total dedication to Allah Most High,” was, “the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims.” So if the word did not exist in earliest times, we should not forget that this is also the case with many other Islamic disciplines, such as tafsir, ‘Qur’anic exegesis,’ or ‘ilm al-jarh wa ta‘dil, ‘the science of the positive and negative factors that affect hadith narrators acceptability,’ or ‘ilm al-tawhid, the science of belief in Islamic tenets of faith,’ all of which proved to be of the utmost importance to the correct preservation and transmission of the religion.
As for the origin of the word Tasawwuf, it may well be from Sufi, the person who does Tasawwuf, which seems to be etymologically prior to it, for the earliest mention of either term was by Hasan al-Basri who died 110 years after the Hijra, and is reported to have said, “I saw a Sufi circumambulating the Kaaba, and offered him a dirham, but he would not accept it.” It therefore seems better to understand Tasawwuf by first asking what a Sufi is; and perhaps the best definition of both the Sufi and his way, certainly one of the most frequently quoted by masters of the discipline, is from the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) who said:
Allah Most High says: “He who is hostile to a friend of Mine I declare war against. My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks me, I will surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him” (Fath al-Bari, 11.340–41, hadith 6502);
This hadith was related by Imam Bukhari, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bayhaqi, and others with multiple contiguous chains of transmission, and is sahih. It discloses the central reality of Tasawwuf, which is precisely change, while describing the path to this change, in conformity with a traditional definition used by masters in the Middle East, who define a Sufi as Faqihun ‘amila bi ‘ilmihi fa awrathahu Llahu ‘ilma ma lam ya‘lam,‘A man of religious learning who applied what he knew, so Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know.’
To clarify, a Sufi is a man of religious learning,because the hadith says, “My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him,” and only through learning can the Sufi know the command of Allah, or what has been made obligatory for him. He hasapplied what he knew, because the hadith says he not only approaches Allah with the obligatory, but “keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him.” And in turn, Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know, because the hadith says, “And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks,” which is a metaphor for the consummate awareness of tawhid, or the ‘unity of Allah,’ which in the context of human actions such as hearing, sight, seizing, and walking, consists of realizing the words of the Qur’an about Allah that,
“It is He who created you and what you do” (Qur’an 37:96).
The origin of the way of the Sufi thus lies in the prophetic sunna. The sincerity to Allah that it entails was the rule among the earliest Muslims, to whom this was simply a state of being without a name, while it only became a distinct discipline when the majority of the Community had drifted away and changed from this state. Muslims of subsequent generations required systematic effort to attain it, and it was because of the change in the Islamic environment after the earliest generations, that a discipline by the name of Tasawwuf came to exist.
But if this is true of origins, the more significant question is: How central is Tasawwuf to the religion, and: Where does it fit into Islam as a whole? Perhaps the best answer is the hadith of Muslim, that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab said:
As we sat one day with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), a man in pure white clothing and jet black hair came to us, without a trace of travelling upon him, though none of us knew him.
He sat down before the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) bracing his knees against his, resting his hands on his legs, and said: “Muhammad, tell me about Islam.” The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “Islam is to testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and to perform the prayer, give zakat, fast in Ramadan, and perform the pilgrimage to the House if you can find a way.”
He said: “You have spoken the truth,” and we were surprised that he should ask and then confirm the answer. Then he said:
“Tell me about true faith (iman),” and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) answered: “It is to believe in Allah, His angels, His inspired Books, His messengers, the Last Day, and in destiny, its good and evil.”
“You have spoken the truth,” he said, “Now tell me about the perfection of faith (ihsan),” and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) answered: “It is to worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you see Him not, He nevertheless sees you.”
The hadith continues to where ‘Umar said:
Then the visitor left. I waited a long while, and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said to me, “Do you know, ‘Umar, who was the questioner?” and I replied, “Allah and His messenger know best.” He said,
“It was Gabriel, who came to you to teach you your religion” (Sahih Muslim, 1.37: hadith 8).
This is a sahih hadith, described by Imam Nawawi as one of the hadiths upon which the Islamic religion turns. The use of din in the last words of it,Atakum yu‘allimukum dinakum, “came to you to teach you your religion” entails that the religion of Islam is composed of the three fundamentals mentioned in the hadith: Islam, or external compliance with what Allah asks of us; Iman, or the belief in the unseen that the prophets have informed us of; and Ihsan, or to worship Allah as though one sees Him. The Qur’an says, in Surat Maryam,
“Surely We have revealed the Remembrance, and surely We shall preserve it” (Qur’an 15:9),
and if we reflect how Allah, in His wisdom, has accomplished this, we see that it is by human beings, the traditional scholars He has sent at each level of the religion. The level of Islam has been preserved and conveyed to us by the Imams of Shari‘a or ‘Sacred Law’ and its ancillary disciplines; the level of Iman, by the Imams of ‘Aqida or ‘tenets of faith’; and the level of Ihsan, “to worship Allah as though you see Him,” by the Imams of Tasawwuf.
The hadith’s very words “to worship Allah” show us the interrelation of these three fundamentals, for the how of “worship” is only known through the external prescriptions of Islam, while the validity of this worship in turn presupposes Iman or faith in Allah and the Islamic revelation, without which worship would be but empty motions; while the words, “as if you see Him,” show that Ihsan implies a human change, for it entails the experience of what, for most of us, is not experienced. So to understand Tasawwuf, we must look at the nature of this change in relation to both Islam and Iman, and this is the main focus of my talk tonight.
At the level of Islam, we said that Tasawwuf requires Islam,through ‘submission to the rules of Sacred Law.’ But Islam, for its part, equally requires Tasawwuf. Why? For the very good reason that the sunna which Muslims have been commanded to follow is not just the words and actions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), but also his states, states of the heart such as taqwa ‘godfearingness,’ ikhlas ‘sincerity,’ tawakkul‘reliance on Allah,’ rahma ‘mercy,’ tawadu‘ ‘humility,’ and so on.
Now, it is characteristic of the Islamic ethic that human actions are not simply divided into two shades of morality, right or wrong; but rather five, arranged in order of their consequences in the next world. The obligatory (wajib) is that whose performance is rewarded by Allah in the next life and whose nonperformance is punished. The recommended (mandub) is that whose performance is rewarded, but whose nonperformance is not punished. The permissible (mubah) is indifferent, unconnected with either reward or punishment. The offensive (makruh) is that whose nonperformance is rewarded but whose performance is not punished. The unlawful (haram) is that whose nonperformance is rewarded and whose performance is punished, if one dies unrepentant.
Human states of the heart, the Qur’an and sunna make plain to us, come under each of these headings. Yet they are not dealt with in books of fiqh or ‘Islamic jurisprudence,’ because unlike the prayer, zakat, or fasting, they are not quantifiable in terms of the specific amount of them that must be done. But though they are not countable, they are of the utmost importance to every Muslim. Let’s look at a few examples.
(1) Love of Allah. In Surat al-Baqara of the Qur’an, Allah blames those who ascribe associates to Allah whom they love as much as they love Allah. Then He says,
“And those who believe are greater in love for Allah” (Qur’an 2:165), making being a believer conditional upon having greater love for Allah than any other.
(2) Mercy. Bukhari and Muslim relate that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “Whomever is not merciful to people, Allah will show no mercy” (Sahih Muslim, 4.1809: hadith 2319), and Tirmidhi relates the well authenticated (hasan) hadith “Mercy is not taken out of anyone except the damned” (al-Jami‘ al-sahih, 4.323: hadith 1923).
(3) Love of each other. Muslim relates in his Sahih that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “By Him in whose hand is my soul, none of you shall enter paradise until you believe, and none of you shall believe until you love one another . . . .” (Sahih Muslim, 1.74: hadith 54).
(4) Presence of mind in the prayer (salat). Abu Dawud relates in his Sunan that ‘Ammar ibn Yasir heard the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) say, “Truly, a man leaves, and none of his prayer has been recorded for him except a tenth of it, a ninth of it, eighth of it, seventh of it, sixth of it, fifth of it, fourth of it, third of it, a half of it” (Sunan Abi Dawud, 1.211: hadith 796)—meaning that none of a person’s prayer counts for him except that in which he is present in his heart with Allah.
(5) Love of the Prophet. Bukhari relates in his Sahih that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “None of you believes until I am more beloved to him than his father, his son, and all people” (Fath al-Bari, 1.58, hadith 15).
It is plain from these texts that none of the states mentioned—whether mercy, love, or presence of heart—are quantifiable, for the Shari‘a cannot specify that one must “do two units of mercy” or “have three units of presence of mind” in the way that the number of rak‘as of prayer can be specified, yet each of them is personally obligatory for the Muslim. Let us complete the picture by looking at a few examples of states that are haramor ‘strictly unlawful’:
(1) Fear of anyone besides Allah. Allah Most High says in Surat al-Baqara of the Qur’an,
“And fulfill My covenant: I will fulfill your covenant—And fear Me alone” (Qur’an 2:40), the last phrase of which, according to Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, “establishes that a human being is obliged to fear no one besides Allah Most High” (Tafsir al-Fakhr al-Razi, 3.42).
(2) Despair. Allah Most High says,
“None despairs of Allah’s mercy except the people who disbelieve” (Qur’an 12:87), indicating the unlawfulness of this inward state by coupling it with the worst human condition possible, that of unbelief.
(3) Arrogance. Muslim relates in his Sahih that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“No one shall enter paradise who has a particle of arrogance in his heart” (Sahih Muslim, 1.93: hadith 91).
(4) Envy,meaning to wish for another to lose the blessings he enjoys. Abu Dawud relates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Beware of envy, for envy consumes good works as flames consume firewood” (Sunan Abi Dawud, 4.276: hadith 4903).
(5) Showing off in acts of worship. Al-Hakim relates with a sahih chain of transmission that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“The slightest bit of showing off in good works is as if worshipping others with Allah . . . .” (al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn, 1.4).
These and similar haram inward states are not found in books of fiqh or ‘jurisprudence,’ because fiqh can only deal with quantifiable descriptions of rulings. Rather, they are examined in their causes and remedies by the scholars of the ‘inner fiqh’ of Tasawwuf, men such as Imam al-Ghazali in hisIhya’ ‘ulum al-din [The reviving of the religious sciences], Imam al-Rabbani in his Maktubat [Letters], al-Suhrawardi in his ‘Awarif al-Ma‘arif [The knowledges of the illuminates], Abu Talib al-Makki in Qut al-qulub [The sustenance of hearts], and similar classic works, which discuss and solve hundreds of ethical questions about the inner life. These are books of Shari‘a and their questions are questions of Sacred Law, of how it is lawful or unlawful for a Muslim to be; and they preserve the part of the prophetic sunna dealing with states.
Who needs such information? All Muslims, for the Qur’anic verses and authenticated hadiths all point to the fact that a Muslim must not only do certain things and say certain things, but also must be something, must attain certain states of the heart and eliminate others. Do we ever fear someone besides Allah? Do we have a particle of arrogance in our hearts? Is our love for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) greater than our love for any other human being? Is there the slightest bit of showing off in our good works?
Half a minute’s reflection will show the Muslim where he stands on these aspects of his din, and why in classical times, helping Muslims to attain these states was not left to amateurs, but rather delegated to ‘ulama of the heart, the scholars of Islamic Tasawwuf. For most people, these are not easy transformations to make, because of the force of habit, because of the subtlety with which we can deceive ourselves, but most of all because each of us has an ego, the self, the Me, which is called in Arabic al-nafs, about which Allah testifies in Surat Yusuf:
“Verily the self ever commands to do evil” (Qur’an 12:53).
If you do not believe it, consider the hadith related by Muslim in his Sahih, that:
The first person judged on Resurrection Day will be a man martyred in battle.
He will be brought forth, Allah will reacquaint him with His blessings upon him and the man will acknowledge them, whereupon Allah will say, “What have you done with them?” to which the man will respond, “I fought to the death for You.”
Allah will reply, “You lie. You fought in order to be called a hero, and it has already been said.” Then he will be sentenced and dragged away on his face and flung into the fire.
Then a man will be brought forward who learned Sacred Knowledge, taught it to others, and who recited the Qur’an. Allah will remind him of His gifts to him and the man will acknowledge them, and then Allah will say, “What have you done with them?” The man will answer, “I acquired Sacred Knowledge, taught it, and recited the Qur’an, for Your sake.”
Allah will say, “You lie. You learned so as to be called a scholar, and read the Qur’an so as to be called a reciter, and it has already been said.” Then the man will be sentenced and dragged away on his face to be flung into the fire.
Then a man will be brought forward whom Allah generously provided for, giving him various kinds of wealth, and Allah will recall to him the benefits given, and the man will acknowledge them, to which Allah will say, “And what have you done with them?” The man will answer, “I have not left a single kind of expenditure You love to see made, except that I have spent on it for Your sake.”
Allah will say, “You lie. You did it so as to be called generous, and it has already been said.” Then he will be sentenced and dragged away on his face to be flung into the fire (Sahih Muslim, 3.1514: hadith 1905).
We should not fool ourselves about this, because our fate depends on it: in our childhood, our parents taught us how to behave through praise or blame, and for most of us, this permeated and colored our whole motivation for doing things. But when childhood ends, and we come of age in Islam, the religion makes it clear to us, both by the above hadith and by the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) “The slightest bit of showing off in good works is as if worshipping others with Allah” that being motivated by what others think is no longer good enough, and that we must change our motives entirely, and henceforth be motivated by nothing but desire for Allah Himself. The Islamic revelation thus tells the Muslim that it is obligatory to break his habits of thinking and motivation, but it does not tell him how. For that, he must go to the scholars of these states, in accordance with the Qur’anic imperative,
“Ask those who know if you know not” (Qur’an 16:43),
There is no doubt that bringing about this change, purifying the Muslims by bringing them to spiritual sincerity, was one of the central duties of the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), for Allah says in the Surat Al ‘Imran of the Qur’an,
“Allah has truly blessed the believers, for He has sent them a messenger of themselves, who recites His signs to them and purifies them, and teaches them the Book and the Wisdom” (Qur’an 3:164),
which explicitly lists four tasks of the prophetic mission, the second of which, yuzakkihim means precisely to ‘purify them’ and has no other lexical sense. Now, it is plain that this teaching function cannot, as part of an eternal revelation, have ended with the passing of the first generation, a fact that Allah explictly confirms in His injunction in Surat Luqman,
“And follow the path of him who turns unto Me” (Qur’an 31:15).
These verses indicate the teaching and transformative role of those who convey the Islamic revelation to Muslims, and the choice of the word ittiba‘ in the second verse, which is more general, implies both keeping the company of and following the example of a teacher. This is why in the history of Tasawwuf, we find that though there were many methods and schools of thought, these two things never changed: keeping the company of a teacher, and following his example—in exactly the same way that the Sahaba were uplifted and purified by keeping the company of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and following his example.
And this is why the discipline of Tasawwuf has been preserved and transmitted by Tariqas or groups of students under a particular master. First, because this was the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in his purifying function described by the Qur’an. Secondly, Islamic knowledge has never been transmitted by writings alone, but rather from ‘ulama to students. Thirdly, the nature of the knowledge in question is ofhal or ‘state of being,’ not just knowing, and hence requires it be taken from a succession of living masters back to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), for the sheer range and number of the states of heart required by the revelation effectively make imitation of the personal example of a teacher the only effective means of transmission.
So far we have spoken about Tasawwuf in respect to Islam, as a Shari‘a science necessary to fully realize the Sacred Law in one’s life, to attain the states of the heart demanded by the Qur’an and hadith. This close connection between Shari‘a and Tasawwuf is expressed by the statement of Imam Malik, founder of the Maliki school, that “he who practices Tasawwuf without learning Sacred Law corrupts his faith, while he who learns Sacred Law without practicing Tasawwuf corrupts himself. Only he who combines the two proves true.” This is why Tasawwuf was taught as part of the traditional curriculum in madrasas across the Muslim world from Malaysia to Morocco, why many of the greatest Shari‘a scholars of this Umma have been Sufis, and why until the end of the Islamic caliphate at the beginning of this century and the subsequent Western control and cultural dominance of Muslim lands, there were teachers of Tasawwuf in Islamic institutions of higher learning from Lucknow to Istanbul to Cairo.
But there is a second aspect of Tasawwuf that we have not yet talked about; namely, its relation to Iman or ‘True Faith,’ the second pillar of the Islamic religion, which in the context of the Islamic sciences consists of ‘Aqida or ‘orthodox belief.’
All Muslims believe in Allah, and that He is transcendently beyond anything conceivable to the minds of men, for the human intellect is imprisoned within its own sense impressions and the categories of thought derived from them, such as number, directionality, spatial extention, place, time, and so forth. Allah is beyond all of that; in His own words,
“There is nothing whatesover like unto Him” (Qur’an 42:11)
If we reflect for a moment on this verse, in the light of the hadith of Muslim about Ihsan that “it is to worship Allah as though you see Him,” we realize that the means of seeing here is not the eye, which can only behold physical things like itself; nor yet the mind, which cannot transcend its own impressions to reach the Divine, but rather certitude, the light of Iman, whose locus is not the eye or the brain, but rather the ruh, a subtle faculty Allah has created within each of us called the soul, whose knowledge is unobstructed by the bounds of the created universe. Allah Most High says, by way of exalting the nature of this faculty by leaving it a mystery,
“Say: ‘The soul is of the affair of my Lord’” (Qur’an 17:85).
The food of this ruh is dhikr or the ‘remembrance of Allah.’ Why? Because acts of obedience increase the light of certainty and Iman in the soul, and dhikr is among the greatest of them, as is attested to by the sahih hadith related by al-Hakim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Shall I not tell you of the best of your works, the purest of them in the eyes of your Master, the highest in raising your rank, better than giving gold and silver, and better for you than to meet your enemy and smite their necks, and they smite yours?” They said, “This—what is it, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said: Dhikru Llahi ‘azza wa jall, “The remembrance of Allah Mighty and Majestic.” (al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn, 1.496).
Increasing the strength of Iman through good actions, and particularly through the medium of dhikr has tremendous implications for the Islamic religion and traditional spirituality. A non-Muslim once asked me, “If God exists, then why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn’t He just come out and say so?”
The answer is that taklif or ‘moral responsibility’ in this life is not only concerned with outward actions, but with what we believe, our ‘Aqida—and the strength with which we believe it. If belief in God and other eternal truths were effortless in this world, there would be no point in Allah making us responsible for it, it would be automatic, involuntary, like our belief, say, that London is in England. There would no point in making someone responsible for something impossible not to believe.
But the responsibility Allah has place upon us is belief in the Unseen, as a test for us in this world to choose between kufr and Iman, to distinguish believer from unbeliever, and some believers above others.
This why strengthening Iman through dhikr is of such methodological importance for Tasawwuf: we have not only been commanded as Muslims to believe in certain things, but have been commanded to have absolute certainty in them. The world we see around us is composed of veils of light and darkness: events come that knock the Iman out of some of us, and Allah tests each of us as to the degree of certainty with which we believe the eternal truths of the religion. It was in this sense that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab said, “If the Iman of Abu Bakr were weighed against the Iman of the entire Umma, it would outweigh it.”
Now, in traditional ‘Aqida one of the most important tenets is the wahdaniyya or ‘oneness and uniqueness’ of Allah Most High. This means He is without any sharik or associate in His being, in His attributes, or in His acts. But the ability to hold this insight in mind in the rough and tumble of daily life is a function of the strength of certainty (yaqin) in one’s heart. Allah tells the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in Surat al-A‘raf of the Qur’an,
“Say: ‘I do not possess benefit for myself or harm, except as Allah wills’” (Qur’an 7:188),
yet we tend to rely on ourselves and our plans, in obliviousness to the facts of ‘Aqida that ourselves and our plans have no effect, that Allah alone brings about effects.
If you want to test yourself on this, the next time you contact someone with good connections whose help is critical to you, take a look at your heart at the moment you ask him to put in a good word for you with someone, and see whom you are relying upon. If you are like most of us, Allah is not at the forefront of your thoughts, despite the fact that He alone is controlling the outcome. Isn’t this a lapse in your ‘Aqida, or, at the very least, in your certainty?
Tasawwuf corrects such shortcomings by step-by-step increasing the Muslim’s certainty in Allah. The two central means of Tasawwuf in attaining theconviction demanded by ‘Aqida are mudhakara, or learning the traditional tenets of Islamic faith, and dhikr, deepening one’s certainty in them by remembrance of Allah. It is part of our faith that, in the words of the Qur’an in Surat al-Saffat,
“Allah has created you and what you do” (Qur’an 37:96);
yet for how many of us is this day to day experience? Because Tasawwuf remedies this and other shortcomings of Iman, by increasing the Muslim’s certainty through a systematic way of teaching and dhikr, it has traditionally been regarded as personally obligatory to this pillar of the religion also, and from the earliest centuries of Islam, has proved its worth.
The last question we will deal with tonight is: What about the bad Sufis we read about, who contravene the teachings of Islam?
The answer is that there are two meanings of Sufi: the first is “Anyone who considers himself a Sufi,” which is the rule of thumb of orientalist historians of Sufism and popular writers, who would oppose the “Sufis” to the “Ulama.” I think the Qur’anic verses and hadiths we have mentioned tonight about the scope and method of true Tasawwuf show why we must insist on the primacy of the definition of a Sufi as “a man of religious learning who applied what he knew, so Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know.”
The very first thing a Sufi, as a man of religious learning knows is that the Shari‘a and ‘Aqida of Islam are above every human being. Whoever does not know this will never be a Sufi, except in the orientalist sense of the word—like someone standing in front of the stock exchange in an expensive suit with a briefcase to convince people he is a stockbroker. A real stockbroker is something else.
Because this distinction is ignored today by otherwise well-meaning Muslims, it is often forgotten that the ‘ulama who have criticized Sufis, such as Ibn al-Jawzi in his Talbis Iblis [The Devil’s deception], or Ibn Taymiya in places in his Fatawa, or Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, were not criticizing Tasawwuf as an ancillary discipline to the Shari‘a. The proof of this is Ibn al-Jawzi’s five-volume Sifat al-safwa, which contains the biographies of the very same Sufis mentioned in al-Qushayri’s famous Tasawwuf manual al-Risala al-Qushayriyya. Ibn Taymiya considered himself a Sufi of the Qadiri order, and volumes ten and eleven of his thirty-seven-volume Majmu‘ al-fatawa are devoted to Tasawwuf. And Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya wrote his three-volume Madarij al-salikin, a detailed commentary on ‘Abdullah al-Ansari al-Harawi’s tract on the spiritual stations of the Sufi path, Manazil al-sa’irin. These works show that their authors’ criticisms were not directed at Tasawwuf as such, but rather at specific groups of their times, and they should be understood for what they are.
As in other Islamic sciences, mistakes historically did occur in Tasawwuf, most of them stemming from not recognizing the primacy of Shari‘a and ‘Aqida above all else. But these mistakes were not different in principle from, for example, the Isra’iliyyat (baseless tales of Bani Isra’il) that crept into tafsir literature, or the mawdu‘at (hadith forgeries) that crept into the hadith. These were not taken as proof that tafsir was bad, or hadith was deviance, but rather, in each discipline, the errors were identified and warned against by Imams of the field, because the Umma needed the rest. And such corrections are precisely what we find in books like Qushayri’s Risala,Ghazali’s Ihya’ and other works of Sufism.
For all of the reasons we have mentioned, Tasawwuf was accepted as an essential part of the Islamic religion by the ‘ulama of this Umma. The proof of this is all the famous scholars of Shari‘a sciences who had the higher education of Tasawwuf, among them Ibn ‘Abidin, al-Razi, Ahmad Sirhindi, Zakariyya al-Ansari, al-‘Izz ibn ‘Abd al-Salam, Ibn Daqiq al-‘Eid, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Shah Wali Allah, Ahmad Dardir, Ibrahim al-Bajuri, ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, Imam al-Nawawi, Taqi al-Din al-Subki, and al-Suyuti.
Among the Sufis who aided Islam with the sword as well as the pen, to quote Reliance of the Traveller, were:
such men as the Naqshbandi sheikh Shamil al-Daghestani, who fought a prolonged war against the Russians in the Caucasus in the nineteenth century; Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abdullah al-Somali, a sheikh of the Salihiyya order who led Muslims against the British and Italians in Somalia from 1899 to 1920; the Qadiri sheikh ‘Uthman ibn Fodi, who led jihad in Northern Nigeria from 1804 to 1808 to establish Islamic rule; the Qadiri sheikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri, who led the Algerians against the French from 1832 to 1847; the Darqawi faqir al-Hajj Muhammad al-Ahrash, who fought the French in Egypt in 1799; the Tijani sheikh al-Hajj ‘Umar Tal, who led Islamic Jihad in Guinea, Senegal, and Mali from 1852 to 1864; and the Qadiri sheikh Ma’ al-‘Aynayn al-Qalqami, who helped marshal Muslim resistance to the French in northern Mauritania and southern Morocco from 1905 to 1909.
Among the Sufis whose missionary work Islamized entire regions are such men as the founder of the Sanusiyya order, Muhammad ‘Ali Sanusi, whose efforts and jihad from 1807 to 1859 consolidated Islam as the religion of peoples from the Libyan Desert to sub-Saharan Africa; [and] the Shadhili sheikh Muhammad Ma‘ruf and Qadiri sheikh Uways al-Barawi, whose efforts spread Islam westward and inland from the East African Coast . . . . (Reliance of the Traveller,863).
It is plain from the examples of such men what kind of Muslims have been Sufis; namely, all kinds, right across the board—and that Tasawwuf did not prevent them from serving Islam in any way they could.
To summarize everything I have said tonight: In looking first at Tasawwuf and Shari‘a, we found that many Qur’anic verses and sahih hadiths oblige the Muslim to eliminate haram inner states as arrogance, envy, and fear of anyone besides Allah; and on the other hand, to acquire such obligatory inner states as mercy, love of one’s fellow Muslims, presence of mind in prayer, and love of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). We found that these inward states could not be dealt with in books of fiqh, whose purpose is to specify the outward, quantifiable aspects of the Shari‘a. The knowledge of these states is nevertheless of the utmost importance to every Muslim, and this is why it was studied under the ‘ulama of Ihsan, the teachers of Tasawwuf, in all periods of Islamic history until the beginning of the present century.
We then turned to the level of Iman, and found that though the ‘Aqida of Muslims is that Allah alone has any effect in this world, keeping this in mind in everhday life is not a given of human consciousness, but rather a function of a Muslim’s yaqin, his certainty. And we found that Tasawwuf, as an ancillary discipline to ‘Aqida, emphasizes the systematic increase of this certainty through both mudhakara, ‘teaching tenets of faith’ and dhikr, ‘the remembrance of Allah,’ in accordance with the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) about Ihsan that “it is worship Allah as though you see Him.”
Lastly, we found that accusations against Tasawwuf made by scholars such as Ibn al-Jawzi, and Ibn Taymiya were not directed against Tasawwuf in principle, but to specific groups and individuals in the times of these authors, the proof for which is the other books by the same authors that showed their understanding of Tasawwuf as a Shari‘a science.
To return to the starting point of my talk this evening, with the disappearance of traditional Islamic scholars from the Umma, two very different pictures of Tasawwuf emerge today. If we read books written after the dismantling of the traditional fabric of Islam by colonial powers in the last century, we find the big hoax: Islam without spirituality and Shari‘a without Tasawwuf. But if we read the classical works of Islamic scholarship, we learn that Tasawwuf has been a Shari‘a science like tafsir, hadith, or any other, throughout the history of Islam. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Truly, Allah does not look at your outward forms and wealth, but rather at your hearts and your works” (Sahih Muslim, 4.1389: hadith 2564).
And this is the brightest hope that Islam can offer a modern world darkened by materialism and nihilism: Islam as it truly is; the hope of eternal salvation through a religion of brotherhood and social and economic justice outwardly, and the direct experience of divine love and illumination inwardly.
© Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995
This the text of a lecture give at Islamic Foundation (Markfield Center, Leicester) January 1995 and Croydon Mosque 30th January 1995.
1. It is of the sunna to be afraid for one’s past, one’s state at death, for calamities, and for treachery and disgrace. It is of the sunna to be patient and steadfast in worship, in blessings, in tribulations, and in divine punishments in one’s body, reputation, family, or money. It is of the sunna to have firm patience in avoiding sins, and to make up for one’s past misdeeds.
2. It is of the sunna to intend worship and obedience to Allah by one’s intention, deeds, words, and one’s every movement and rest; and to be indifferent to this world and desirous of the next, and to reflect carefully upon how one is now, and shall be then, and upon one’s being mustered on the Last Day, being raised from the dead, and questioned. It is sunna to hope that one’s obedience will be accepted, as well as one’s repentance from disobedience, and to be satisfied with what one has, and be contented with what is generally considered enough for a person, without extravagance and without penury.
3. It is obligatory to be contented with what Allah Most High has destined when it is of His acts, such as illness, disease, poverty, malady, loss of intellect, and so forth; though some say it is but the sunna to be contented with such things, and that what is obligatory is that one have patience with them. As for acts of human beings that Allah has forbidden, such as unbelief and misguidance, contentment with them is unlawful by consensus (ijma‘) of all scholars, for contentment with unbelief and acts of disobedience is itself unbelief and disobedience.
4. It is permissible to weep for the dead provided one does not commit unlawful things such as calling out to the deceased in lamentation as if he were alive and enumerating his great qualities, or wailing, or bitterness a what Allah has destined and necessarily appointed, or despair which contravenes one’s servitude and submission to Him. It is praiseworthy to weep for the deceased out of mercy for him, as the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said of weeping when he wept for the dead, “This is a mercy Allah has placed in the hearts of His servants”—for it does not negate being content with Allah’s destiny—as opposed to weeping over him because of one’s own loss at no longer having him, which is unpraiseworthy. Al-Fudayl, when his son died, laughed. He said, “I saw that Allah had destined it, and I wished to be pleased with what Allah had destined.” And this is a good state in relation to those who despair. As for mercy towards the deceased, satisfaction with destiny, and praising Allah, which was the state of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), it is more perfect.
5. Patience with one’s personal trials is obligatory by consensus of all the intelligent. As for acceptance of them, it is spiritually higher and closer to Allah to have contentment with them, though not obligatory. Even higher than contentment is to give thanks to Allah for them because of the divine blessing in them, in view of the reward and spiritual ascent in them if one has patience with them. It is unlawful for someone in disobedience to accept his remoteness from Allah. And it is not obligatory for someone being punished by Allah to have contentment with it.